


fated to love you

by stupidbadgers



Category: Naruto
Genre: Discord: Umino Hours, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Humor, M/M, Minor Angst, Mutual Pining, Umino Hours Winter Bingo, idiots to lovers, kakashi is the idiot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-16 10:35:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28580616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stupidbadgers/pseuds/stupidbadgers
Summary: hatake kakashi is a disaster gay
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka
Comments: 16
Kudos: 193
Collections: The Umino Hours Winter Bingo 2020





	fated to love you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tmo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tmo/gifts).



> after talking with tmo the other day, i had this idea stuck in my head. i'm really pleased with how it turned out. thanks for the inspiration t <3\. 
> 
> the biggest of thanks to [ari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/callaina) for beta-ing this and making it _even better_. your comments were a delight to read. 
> 
> any and all mistakes are my own, as i made adjustments to this after ari read it. 
> 
> bingo board prompt: gift giving (U-4)
> 
> enjoy~

Kakashi was sure he was going to throw up. He had never been this nervous in his life. Enemy-nin didn’t even scare him as much as what he had finally decided to do. 

He was going to tell Umino Iruka that he liked him. 

Like, _liked_ liked him. 

Kakashi shook his head, rolling his eye at himself. He hadn’t even been this awkward and ridiculous as a teenager going through puberty, but here he was at the old age of twenty-eight and he proved to be worse than a school-boy with a crush. 

Scratch that, he was like a school-girl with a crush. 

He tilted his head considering all the messed-up-on-purpose reports he had turned into the chuunin, all the times he had goaded the sensei into yelling at him for not visiting the hospital upon return to the village after particularly rough missions, the fiery scarlet Iruka would turn when Kakashi pulled out _Icha Icha_. 

Maybe his first thought was closer to the truth. 

At least he hadn’t gone as far as pulling Iruka’s ponytail. 

Kakashi smirked. Now there was a thought. 

“Don’t be an idiot,” a gruff voice said. 

The jounin peered down at his kitchen floor. Pakkun was sitting on the wooden floor, staring up at Kakashi with a glare that could almost rival Tenzou’s ghoul eyes. 

“Come again?” Kakashi asked. 

“You heard me, brat. You’re making that face that only leads to trouble. Trouble for you and then you come whining to the pack because you’ve made the sensei mad.” 

Kakashi decided in that moment that he needed to keep a closer watch on where Pakkun was spending his time when not with Kakashi because he was beginning to sound eerily like Tsunade. 

“Maa, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kakashi replied, shrugging. He set his now empty mug in the sink to wash later and slouched out of the room. The clicking of nails against wood told him Pakkun was following as he made his way to his bedroom. 

“Don’t play dumb with me.” 

“Is there anything I can do or are you just here to tell me what I can’t do?” Kakashi asked drily.

Pakkun huffed at him, disappearing as a response. 

He loved his pack dearly—they were his family—but they were just as much of nosy gossips as the rest of the shinobi in the village. And pushy too. 

The nervous feeling that had been tamped down by his humorous train of thought returned full force as he picked up the gift he had bought for Iruka. He had found it on one of his missions to Wave and decided it was too perfect to pass up. 

Iruka would either love it or hate it.

He pocketed the present and left his room, slipping his sandals on, before going to sit in his favorite tree outside the Academy while he waited for the ankle-biters to finish the school day. 

*

The two men had been growing closer over the last year and a half that Naruto had been away. Neither really knew when the rambunctious knucklehead would be back and they had found a source of comfort in the other, someone who understood what it was to miss a presence as bright and warm as Naruto. 

Kakashi, for his part, had always had an eye on the chuunin—ever since that mission that went sideways, the one that led Iruka on his path to becoming an Academy instructor. It was by happy accident that Kakashi had decided to read in the tree above the bench Iruka had sat on when he found out Naruto would be in his class and an even happier accident that Kakashi had been the one to search for Iruka and Naruto in the back hills—though, maybe happy wasn’t quite the right word. The threat to both the boy and the sensei too much of a close call for Kakashi’s tastes. 

With great pain he had not approached the sensei before Naruto had unwittingly drawn the two men together. Kakashi had decided that Iruka was too good for him and that he surely would upset some cosmic balance by so much as befriending the other man. The fates were fickle and, in Kakashi’s experience, unforgiving. So he kept his distance, taking the piecemeal interactions they had and carrying them with him, close to his heart, which was quite a bit more vulnerable than people gave him credit for. 

Until Uzumaki Naruto happened. The loudmouthed brat—and Kakashi thought this fondly—had managed to unknowingly forge a friendship between Kakashi and Iruka that Kakashi had only dreamed of. Despite Kakashi’s tendencies toward reading porn in public, ignoring people when they spoke, and being late to… everything, Kakashi wasn’t _rude_. He had manners. And that meant he was cordial with the sensei, going so far as to make polite conversation and even offer to pay for ramen—which was an undertaking when it came to Uzumaki and Umino Ramen Fiends. 

Okay, he only had manners when it came to Umino Iruka, but he would raze the world for that man. 

Perhaps his feelings of “like-like” went a little deeper than he had previously considered. 

Dinners with Naruto and Iruka had somehow morphed to dinners with Iruka and then coffee with Iruka and lunches with Iruka and spending time at Iruka’s apartment after missions and then after Iruka’s shifts at the mission desk or Academy and then when Iruka wasn’t home but had told Kakashi that he was welcome whenever he wanted a quiet place, even if Iruka wasn’t there. 

It was somewhere around the six month mark after Naruto had left and things had escalated to Kakashi hanging around Iruka’s apartment by himself, cooking dinner for them and waiting for the sensei to get home, that Kakashi realized just _how_ deep in this he was. 

Kakashi may have been a genius, but sometimes he was dense. 

He had decided he had two options: the first, allow things to continue as they had been and see what came of it—either their friendship would remain just that, a friendship, or it would become something more—or two, he could run, never look back, maybe defect to Suna. 

And like the coward he was in all things relating to matters of the heart, Kakashi chose option two. 

Minus the defecting to Suna. 

He was too sensitive to the sun and honestly, he did not want to deal with sand in parts of his body that _should not be sandy_.

Kakashi’s resolve lasted a solid four days. 

It was the care in Iruka’s voice that broke Kakashi. He hadn’t expected to find the sensei in the mission room in the middle of the day on a weekday, but there he was, backlit by the large windows, looking like the perfect man that he was. Kakashi’s steps had faltered when he came through the door, but it had been too late to turn around as Iruka had already seen him, caught his eye, and smiled that big, welcoming grin that made the scar on his nose crinkle. Kakashi wouldn’t have been able to refuse the man a single thing in that moment. 

As it had turned out, it wasn’t a weekday—Kakashi was honestly a bit surprised at that and fractionally worried that he hadn’t realized that—and Iruka, despite the large smile, was quite concerned about Kakashi. He knew that the jounin hadn’t been on any missions, had seen him in the village over the last several days, but had not been able to catch Kakashi before the man disappeared. 

It was after this exchange that Kakashi realized he had no say in the matter; love was not a choice. 

That, however, did not mean that he would admit to that four letter word. No, Kakashi firmly stuck with “like” and did his best to not examine it too deeply. And so the months went on, their friendship teetering on the edge of something more, just waiting for a nudge in the right direction. But Kakashi, still convinced that the fates were cruel—not seeing that if there was such a thing, some destiny life was supposed to have, that the fates had put Umino Iruka in Hatake Kakashi’s direct path repeatedly—and that he was undeserving of affection from such a kind soul, refused to take that leap into the abyss of something more. 

Iruka was a straightforward man. What you saw was what you got. For Kakashi, that was a blessing, something he sought and cherished. In their line of work, deception was key. Not only that, but Kakashi had suffered at the words of those in their village—the words that others thought he didn’t hear; the ones hissed in hushed whispers after a seemingly kind smile. Words that sounded like “friend-killer” and “cold-blooded.” 

That, however, was never the case with the Academy sensei. Iruka was quick to come to Kakashi’s defense when he heard others speak ill of the jounin, putting them in their place with a few words and a harsh glare. It did not matter if they were above his rank, Iruka, it seemed, was fiercely loyal to Kakashi. 

Despite this, though, he never nudged that delicate balance between them either. This puzzled Kakashi for a long time. He spent many hours ruminating over whatever it was between them, trying to figure out if he was projecting his feelings onto Iruka or if the other man really was attracted to Kakashi. 

And that was how Kakashi had ended up where he was at the moment, sitting in the tree outside the Academy, waiting for the last bell to ring, signaling the end of the day. 

Kakashi had realized the only way he was going to find out was to tell Iruka how he felt and wait for the other man to reject him completely. 

At least then he could put all of those thoughts and feelings he had into a box in his mind and lock it up tight, placing neatly on the shelf dedicated to Traumas We Don’t Touch. 

Best case scenario, Iruka would laugh it off and still be willing to interact with him. 

Worst case, Kakashi would defect to Suna. 

Though, there was still that problem with the sand. Also the spiders. 

Maybe he could try Wave. It hadn’t been too bad that one time with Team Seven when they all nearly died at the hands of Zabuza. 

Lost in his thoughts, specifically about the way Iruka’s uniform pants hugged his thighs and ass, Kakashi missed the bell ringing and the man of his thoughts walking out to stand below Kakashi’s tree. 

“Hatake!” Iruka barked, his hands on his hips. 

Kakashi did not jump. He was too good of a shinobi for that. 

He did, however, make a squeak that he would deny making under the harshest of tortures. 

“Maa, sensei, what’d I do this time?” Kakashi drawled, swinging to the ground and rubbing the back of his neck. 

The hard look Iruka was giving him quickly morphed into a self-satisfied smirk.

“Nothing, I just didn’t think I would be able to startle you,” Iruka chuckled, crossing his arms. 

“I wasn’t startled,” Kakashi pouted, a flush rising on his cheeks. “I’m a jounin, I don’t startle.” 

Iruka just laughed, shaking his head. He reached for Kakashi’s forearm, pulling the man along behind him. 

“Come on, I’ll grab my stuff and then we can get some groceries from the market. What were you even thinking about?” 

Kakashi didn’t hear the question though. He was too busy considering how tactile the sensei was with him, wondering if he behaved that way with all his friends or if it was just Kakashi. Iruka was always in his space, reaching for his arm, patting his shoulder. When they worked in the kitchen together, his hand would graze along Kakashi’s back as he passed behind him; when they walked side-by-side through the village their fingers and shoulders would bump; any time they were sat at a table, Iruka’s foot would bounce against Kakashi’s. More than once Iruka had fallen asleep plastered to Kakashi’s side, whether they were sitting on the couch or at the kotatsu. 

He looked down at the dark hand still grasping his arm, chalk dust smattered on the first two fingers and his thumb. The touch was warm, even through Kakashi’s shirt. As he watched, they slid down his arm, the skin touching the small part of his arm that was not covered by the sleeve of his shirt. 

Kakashi was marveling at the contrast between Iruka’s dark tone and his own pale complexion when his thoughts were interrupted once more. 

“Kakashi, are you alright?” Iruka asked, peering at him with concern. Kakashi wasn’t quite sure when they had stopped walking, but he realized they were in Iruka’s classroom. “It’s not like you to be so distracted.” 

His mouth was dry, the words stuck in his throat. 

Maybe telling Iruka wasn’t a good idea after all. Kakashi would be crazy to give up what they have now for what could be. Because he was sure that Iruka wouldn’t reciprocate his feelings. It was an impossible thing to ask of the man. 

Iruka stepped closer, his hand moving up Kakashi’s arm to grip his bicep, right over his ANBU tattoo. 

Kakashi took a breath through his mouth. 

Words flooded from between his lips before he even realized what was happening. 

“Iruka, I really like you, like, like-like you, and I’m sorry, I understand that you don’t want to be friends anymore, it’s fine, really, I get it, you don’t have to feel bad, did I say I’m sorry, because I am, please don’t be mad though.” 

He finally got his mouth to stop moving, noise to stop coming from him. Kakashi was sure he was doing his best imitation of a cooked lobster, steam and all. 

Kakashi couldn’t bear to look at Iruka, didn’t want to see the rejection that would be written so plainly on his beautiful features. He was going to miss being able to watch Iruka, watch the laughter dance in his eyes as he talked about this and that from his day, watch the steely look of determination when another shinobi was being particularly unruly about their rejected mission report. 

The silence lasted too long. 

Kakashi looked up. 

Iruka’s brow was furrowed, his head cocked to the side reminding Kakashi eerily of Bisuke. He looked confused. 

No, he looked completely bewildered.

Finally, he spoke. “What the actual fuck?” 

Kakashi wanted to bolt, was readying his hands to make the signs for a shunshin, when Iruka smacked his hand onto Kakashi’s, breaking the chakra that was molding. 

“Don’t you even fucking think about it,” the chuunin growled. “Now, pretend for two seconds you’re a normal person, and tell me what you just said.” 

Kakashi swallowed hard. 

He had barely managed to say it the first time and Iruka wanted him to say it _again_. The fates were cruel and capricious. 

Tucking his hands in his pockets to try to hide how they shook, his fingers touched the cool metal of the gift he had got for Iruka. Somehow he had managed to forget about it. 

He pulled it out. Distract and redirect always worked with the ninken, maybe it would work with Iruka. 

“I got you this while I was in Wave. It reminded me of you and I know you hate when people get you dolphin things—except for Naruto—but I was hoping you might make an exception.” 

He held out the necklace, the dolphin pendant hanging between them. It was a marbled blue with green accents. Kakashi didn’t actually expect Iruka to wear it, but just knowing Iruka had it—accepted it—was more than enough for Kakashi. 

“You bought this for me?” Iruka asked, his voice sounding a little thick. 

Kakashi could smack himself; why did he think _this_ was the thing to distract Iruka with? 

“Uh,” he stuttered, “Uhm, yeah. You don’t have to take it if you don’t want to.” He started to pull his hand back toward himself, necklace still held in his hand. Iruka was just as quick as a moment ago, catching Kakashi’s wrist in a vice grip. 

“You can’t give it to me and then take it back!” Iruka pouted. He turned, gesturing at his neck. “Come on, put it on me.” 

Kakashi was stunned. His movements were mechanical as he wrapped his arms around Iruka, putting the necklace on the man. Iruka turned back around, admiring the way the light reflected off the small pendant. 

“It’s beautiful, Kakashi,” he said, looking up at Kakashi, his eyes wide. “I love it. Thank you.” 

The jounin just dipped his head, not sure what to say. He couldn’t handle the affection in Iruka’s eyes. 

Wait. 

Affection. 

Before Kakashi could look up again, check to make sure he wasn’t manifesting his desires, Iruka spoke quietly. 

“What did you say before?” 

To be honest, Kakashi wasn’t exactly sure _what_ he had said either. So he started again. 

He still didn’t look up as he spoke, “Umino Iruka, I like you. In fact, I may more than like you, but that… that scares me. And I don’t expect you to return my feelings and I understand if this is where our friendship ends.” 

A hand came into his vision, resting against his cheek, the palm warm and causing tingles to dance across his skin. He fought to not lean into the gentle touch. 

“Oh Kakashi. We _should_ reconsider our friendship, but only because I would like it to be more than that.” 

Kakashi’s head snapped up. Iruka’s beautiful, dark eyes were filled with affection, he was sure of it. 

“You silly disaster. I may more than like you, too,” Iruka laughed. “I was waiting for you. I didn’t want to push and have you run. Though really, I haven’t been subtle. You think I touch all my friends as much as I touch you?” 

“I hope not,” Kakashi said before he could stop himself. 

Iruka’s laughter rang through the room. He closed what little distance remained between them, hands cupping Kakashi’s cheeks. His fingers paused at the top of Kakashi’s mask, a silent question. The answer came in the form of a slow blink and then the cloth bunched around Kakashi’s neck and their lips were meeting softly, gently. 

When they pulled apart, Iruka’s smile was small, that private one that Kakashi had only seen Iruka use with himself. 

He recognized it for what it was now. 

Love.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! kudos/comments appreciated! 
> 
> [tumblr](https://stupidbadgers.tumblr.com)


End file.
